The City's Monthly 'Tax' on Prostitution
A reader questions the 'reform' administration’s police policy of extracting monthly fines from sex workers as a form of state-sanctioned blackmail.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In connection with current comment on the present 'reform' city administration, allow me in the interest of common justice to refer to the manner in which the police department deals with the prostitutes of the city. They are arrested summarily once a month, taken to headquarters, allowed to plead guilty and if they quietly submit to a fine of $10 are allowed their freedom from arrest for another thirty days. If, however, they should feel wronged and appear in court and enter a plea of not guilty and are convicted, by the testimony generally only of officers, they are compelled usually to pay a fine of $25 in punishment, I suppose, of their presumption in exercising their rights in seeking the law's protection. Now is not this only another system of blackmail levied on a practically defenseless class of people in the name, but really in mockery, of the law?
“Now is not this only another system of blackmail levied on a practically defenseless class of people in the name, but really in mockery, of the law?”
This letter reveals the long-standing history of 'vice' policing as a revenue stream for local government, a practice that historically exploited vulnerable populations under the guise of order.
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